Manufacturing technology of AS-SOFC prepared with different commercially available precursors

Institute of Power Engineering Ceramic Department CEREL

^a Corresponding author: kawalec@cerel.pl

Abstract

Fuel cells are devices converting the chemical energy into the electrical energy and heat as result of the electrochemical reaction between gaseous fuel and a gas oxidant in flameless combustion process. Because of omission of thermo-mechanical steps that are present in any traditional energy conversion technology (e.g. gas turbine) fuel cells show increased efficiency in comparison. Compact sizes and modular scalability predestines this technology for distributed energy generation including but not limited to renewable energy sources (e.g. wind, solar). Fuel cells technology also addresses other very important part of distributed renewable energy generation. Because of the unreliable energy production rates and the usual for renewable energy sources mismatch between energy supply and demand, some sort of energy storage is needed to store surplus of produced energy and release it when needed. Reversible fuel cells, that generate hydrogen from available surplus of energy and then generate energy from that stored fuel when needed are cheaper and more ecologically friendly alternative to usually used batteries. This technology is still under development, including research at IEn OC CEREL. In the early development of reversible fuel cells, new types of nickel oxide and porosity forming carbon was evaluated for this task. This work compares the electrical and mechanical parameters of SOFC manufactured with JT Backer NiO and Carbon Polska carbon with cells made from other commercially available materials. Based on evaluated quality, purity, availability and cost, following materials were selected for comparison: Novamet NiO, 99,9 % pure, grain size 1-2 µm and Aldrich carbon with parameters similar to graphite used previously. Preliminary tests show clear changes in the microstructural, mechanical and electrical parameters.